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Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Euro-Socialist America

From Mark Steyn -

"...By most measures, America is already way beyond Europe, and significantly worse than other English-speaking nations in the New World (Canada, Australia, New Zealand). From the OECD's 2011 edition of Government At A Glance, government expenditures per person:

America is not who it thinks it is. John Hawkins has an excellent post today on the five structural problems that are destroying the nation and he marshals some evidence of his own:

America doesn't have the highest taxes in the Western world, but it does have the most progressive tax system in the Western world. As a practical matter, what this means is that we have large numbers of Americans voting on whether others should pay more taxes in order to give them things.

Every time the Democrats call for "the richest one per cent" to pay their "fair share", Republicans ought to point out that we have a more progressive - ie, redistributive - tax system than Canada, Scandinavia, Belgium, the Netherlands... In other words, America's rich already pay more than Sweden's rich or Norway's rich. If it's fair enough for the Continentals, why isn't it fair for Americans?
What about corporate tax? Federal corporate tax in the US: 35 per cent; in Canada: 11-15 per cent. Total (national, local, the lot) corporate tax burden: Ireland 12.5 per cent, Sweden 22 per cent, Denmark 24 per cent, Netherlands 25 per cent, Germany 29 per cent, Italy 31 per cent, Belgium 33 per cent, United States 40 per cent.
So America is more Euro-socialist than most Euro-socialists. How about debt? John Hawkins again:

It is quite literally impossible to pay off the debt our nation owes along with the commitment we've made to our own citizens via Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security unless inflation dramatically reduces the value of our currency which would erode savings, drive cost-of-living expenses into the stratosphere and generally decimate the economy. Meanwhile, taking even the mildest steps to safeguard the future of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid has proven to be almost impossible in the current political environment. As a practical matter, this means our country is headed towards bankruptcy or runaway inflation so bad that we might as well be bankrupt.

Other countries are not in this situation: Canada's federal government ran a $6 billion deficit last year (or about what Washington borrows every 30 hours or so); this year it will have a surplus of $18 billion. After running trillion-dollar deficits for every year of Obama's first term, last year Washington restrained itself to three-quarters of a trillion. New Zealand is paying down Crown debt from a peak of 26 per cent of GDP to 16 per cent by 2019. In America, federal debt is over 100 per cent of GDP. Australia's federal debt works out to $12,000 per citizen. In America, it's $54,000.
The United States is the Brokest Nation in History, broker than anyone else has ever been ever. And yet:

Most people's eyes glaze over when you talk about the subject. Sadly, our nation will probably have to start going over the falls before everyone agrees that we have to start paddling in the other direction and by then, it will be too late."